Global Justice Center Blog

Exposing a “Pornography Ploy”: The Global Justice Center calls for President U Thein Sein to release all political prisoners and make public all related trial transcripts

October 06, 2011

The Global Justice Center calls for President U Thein Sein to release all political prisoners and make public all related trial transcripts.

The Global Justice Center today released a October 23, 2008 official court transcript which exposes the military’s use of trumped up pornography charges to convict fourteen Buddhist nuns and monks suspected of supporting the “saffron revolution” of 2007.

The six page judgment, signed by Judge U Peine Tun Aung after a one-day “trial,” convicted the seven nuns and seven monks of possessing “dirty” videos which “insulted” religion and sentenced them to imprisonment with hard labor for four years and three months. The judgment in Burmese can be found here. [English translation forthcoming.]

Among those convicted was Daw Pone Na Mee (Daw Mya Nyunt), an elderly, crippled, 84-year-old nun, who was one of the political prisoners visited by UN Special Rapporteur, Mr. Tomas Quintana in 2008. Mr. Quintana’s report on this visit related that the infirm nun told him she had no idea why she was in prison.

Burma’s top officials including the President and Chief Justice have consistently denied that political prisoners exist and claim that all prisoners have been convicted for committing serious crimes.

The Global Justice Center, a New York based human rights law group, calls for Burma’s President U Thein Sein to explain the full extent of this “perfidious pornography ploy,” and to release the trial transcripts of all current and former political prisoners, including any which are included in the upcoming release of 6,359 prisoners.